Class blog for Anth 249: Evolution and human disease. We will be responding to class readings and engaging with the wider network of blogs and online content on evolutionary medicine. We might also make up some fun projects along the way.

Friday, March 29, 2013

Searcher - Pitocin versus Oxytocin

There seems to be these drastically conflicting images
surrounding birth. On the one hand, birth is regard as a beautiful, miraculous
event in which another being is created from the mother’s being, emerging new
in this world. On the other hand, it has been widely represented as dangerous,
excruciating, and an unnatural process for the mother.

The only images of birth I have seen up until now are of
mothers-to-be, lying helplessly on their backs, writhing in agony, in a cold
room, surrounded by overly-protected medical practitioners yelling commands and
prodding at the mother. The whole operation seemed doomed with fear, danger, embarrassment
and uncertainty. Honestly, how is this supposed to be a beautiful experience?

Bearing a child does not have to be a traumatizing
experience though. Perhaps, these two opposite extreme images surrounding birth
exist because two very different approaches to birth have to be
considered. One consists of the
heavily drugged-intervened hospital approach and the other is an all-natural
home birth approach. There are obviously many in between scenarios that take
advantage of both approaches.

There is a very important aspect to the all-natural approach
however that needs to be considered. After watching The Business of Being Born,
labor and birth can be a very transcendent experience for the woman. And really
I think it’s truly close to thievery to steal that empowering moment from her.

The oxytocin that the mother’s body releases during the
birthing process is not only important for physiological reasons, such as in
the labor process, bonding with the child after birth and breast feeding, but for
psychological ones as well. Oxytocin acts to ease stress. So imagine, laboring
extensively for hours on end, to finally birth your own child. With a rush of
oxytocin and the relief of labor being over, that feeling must be
overwhelmingly amazing.

There has been plenty of research to suggest that
administering pitocin, synthetic oxytocin, to mothers in labor interrupts this
feeling for the mother and the bonding between mother and child. There was a
studied done in 2007 in BMC Neuroscience, conducted at the University of
Memphis, that suggests that pitocin can have long term effects to the child’s
nervous system too, affecting their social behavior.

The study does not necessarily suggest that these effects
happen in humans, because the study was done on voles. The study theorizes that
the interaction between mother and offspring after birth greatly influences the
future social behavior of the offspring; this is at least true for the voles.
It is clear, however, that administering pitocin directly influences the
post-natal interaction between a mother and a child.